Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 09 January 2008 09:40
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Hewlett-Packard says it will cut 25 percent from the energy consumption of its volume desktop and notebook PCs by 2010 - but the fine print reveals that the baseline is 2005.
Power savings are welcome, but my inner cynic is alerted when a company compares where it plan to be in two years time with where it was two years ago rather than with the current situation.
Writing
elsewhere in May 2007, I noted the trend to making 'green IT' claims in press releases. I've also
observed that organisations are more concerned about saving money and looking good than they are with actual environmental benefits.
So what can we expect from HP? Basically more of the same, it seems, with the benefits coming from the wider adoption of Intel CPUs and chipsets that deliver more processing power from less electrical power, along with optional 80 PLUS power supplies in desktops and standard 85 percent efficient PSUs in certain models.
HP says fitting 1000 PCs with 80 PLUS power supplies can reduce carbon dioxide emissions over a year by the equivalent of burning 4500 gallons of gasoline. Every little counts, but let's put that into perspective. It's the equivalent of 4.5 gallons per PC. If the user drove to work in a Land Cruiser, that's perhaps one or two days commute.
The company also draws attention to the way many of its products meet the EPEAT environmental criteria. But if you look at the EPEAT requirements, several of them fall into the same
mistake that Greenpeace makes - it doesn't matter what the attributes are, what's required is that the vendor reports them.
